First Ebola case in Senegal, five more states at risk of outbreak spread

Reuters / China Daily

West African state of Senegal has become the region's fifth country to confirm a case of the #deadly #Ebola virus that has killed more than 1,500 people with the #WHO warning that five more states are at risk for spread of the outbreak.

A university student from neighbouring Guinea first asked for medical treatment in Dakar on Tuesday but gave no sign of Ebola, Health Minister Awa Marie Coll Seck told reporters. The student was quarantined the next day after scientists in Guinea notified Senegalese authorities that they are unaware of whereabouts of one person who had had contact with sick people, Seck said.

Seck told the press that the student's condition is “satisfactory,” after being tested positive with the deadly virus, but it is still unclear when or how the new victim came to Senegal after the country sealed off its border with Guinea last week. The World Health Organisation has been alerted of the new case.

Meanwhile, some 160 people are being monitored in Nigeria’s Port Harcourt after a doctor died from the virus on Thursday.

The Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa began last year in Guinea. Since then, the disease has spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria and now Senegal. Five more countries were identified as at risk of contracting the virus, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.

“The following countries share land borders or major transportation connections with the affected countries and are therefore at risk for spread of the Ebola outbreak: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Senegal,” the agency said, adding it will aid the new states with “surveillance, preparedness and response plan.”

Reuters / Misha Hussain

The Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report 1 is the first update issued by the WHO following Thursday's release of an Ebola response roadmap that aims to stop the spread of the virus within six to nine months. According to the latest UN statistic almost 40 percent of the reported cases have occurred within the past three weeks, and warned that eventually 20,000 people could be infected.

“There are serious problems with case management and infection prevention and control,” the report said. “The situation is worsening in Liberia and Sierra Leone.”

As individual African states battle the virus, the health minister Miatta Kargbo of Sierra Leone has been dismissed by the country's president “to create a conducive environment for efficient and effective handling of the Ebola outbreak,” that has killed more than 400 people in that country alone.

The latest official number of Ebola cases in Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone stands at 3,069, with over 1,552 deaths, making this the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, WHO said.
The head of French Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Mego Terziam, believes the WHO doesn’t have enough resources to stop Ebola from spreading.

“I am extremely pessimistic if there is not a substantial international mobilisation,” Terziam said. “Organisations like the WHO and MSF will be not capable to mobilise additional human resources, additional logistics in order to control the epidemic.”

In order to get ready for the worst possible scenario and help those already suffering, researchers are moving forward with trials of experimental Ebola vaccines, but the first results are unlikely before the year end.

‘All hands on deck’: US pushes ahead with Ebola vaccine trials on humans

With the spread of Ebola, the WHO has deemed it ethical to try out experimental drugs that show promise in curing the decease, as there are no approved Ebola vaccines or treatments. RT

Ebola spreading faster, out of control for next 6 months – Doctors without Borders

A woman stands at a pharmacy next to a poster displaying a government message against Ebola, at a maternity hospital in Abidjan August 14, 2014 (Reuters / Luc Gnago)

The spread of #Ebola is outrunning efforts to stop it, according to international aid group Doctors Without Borders, which estimates it might take six months to get the situation under control.

The chief of the French-founded group, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Joanne Liu, spent 10 days in the disease-hit regions of West #Africa, before voicing her conclusions at a Friday press conference in Geneva.

"[Ebola] is deteriorating faster, and moving faster, than we can respond to," she told reporters.

The deadliest ever outbreak of Ebola has already claimed 1,145 lives, according to official figures, which could in fact “vastly underestimate” the real magnitude of the disaster, the World Health Organization warned a day earlier.

"It is like wartime," Liu said. "It's moving, and advancing, but we have no clue how it's going. Like in wartime, we have a total collapse of infrastructure."

She gave as an example a 40-bed treatment center in Liberia, where 137 people are being cared for. Overcrowded facilities there are “absolutely dangerous," Liu said.

"With the massive influx of patients that we had over the last few days, we're not able to keep zones of patients anymore. Everybody is mixed," she said.

Overcrowded hospitals do not mean all of those suspected of being infected go there. Superstitions and fears make many in African villages hide their sick relatives at home.

The new Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Elhadj As Sy, who has also traveled to the Ebola-struck region, said in a Friday statement that “tackling fears, ignorance and stigma” surrounding the disease in the local African communities was a major challenge for IFRC volunteers.
As Sy said it was also “particularly important to stop more healthcare workers in the affected areas from getting infected.”
Sierra Leone's president, Ernest Bai Koroma, told journalists Friday that the country has lost two doctors and 32 nurses to Ebola.

"We need specialized clinicians and expertise, and that is why we are appealing to the international community for an enhanced response to our fight" against Ebola, he said, AFP reported.

Overall in the four affected countries, 80 healthcare workers died of Ebola. While 170 were infected, according to Doctors Without Borders.

Liberia's president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, expressed regret Saturday over the high death toll among the country's healthcare workers who have fought the Ebola outbreak, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile in Nigeria, where three people have died of Ebola, while 169 are being checked for possible infection, the president has decided to sack 16,000 doctors who participated in a strike for better working conditions, Nigeria’s Premium Times reports.

News of the country’s medical staff being sacked amid fears of epidemic spreading has resulted in a massive online outcry with some of the users blaming the government for untimely sacking of doctors while others blaming doctors for an untimely strike.
Authorities of the worst-hit country, Liberia, fear that hunger could become a by-product of the epidemic, as there are not enough food supplies in the quarantined areas.

Liberia has requested emergency food aid from donors.

"We can establish as many checkpoints as we want, but if we cannot get the food and the medical supplies into affected communities, they will leave," Information Minister Lewis Brown said, Reuters reported. "We can't ask our people to starve."

Brown has also criticized the international community for its slow response to the Ebola crisis.

"The reaction quite frankly is not where we would want it to be to give any serious level of comfort," he said.  RT